In Case
by Random-Battlecry
Summary: He wanted to be her, the way she was him. One shot that takes place during the first season episode "Color Blind." Sydney and Shepard in the safe house.


**A/N: A one-shot that takes place near the end of the first season episode "Color Blind." I have a weird fascination for the character of Shepard. I have a weird fascination for a lot of things.**

**In Case**

She's gone out now, and he thinks he maybe doubts that she'll return. He doesn't think he would, were he in her place. The safe house is old and creaks around him; there's been a squatter living on the back porch and he thinks amongst the blankets and cardboard shoes left behind they left also a watchful eye peering craftily at him through the closely shuttered window. He draws his knees up towards his chin, puts his arm about them. In the aftermath of terror and adrenaline his skin is cold and clammy from sweat which will dry, he knows, till he feels powdered all over with dust, as though he's disintegrating from long disuse.

The firelight flickers, shadows only, no color. He wouldn't come back to this.

She does, though, coming in unexpected glory through the door, the remains of tears staining her face. On her finger a small remnant of blood— someone else's— from the fighting she's done to get them out of the asylum. Her weeping has washed the rest of it away onto the soil of the foreign woods outside. She comes closer and crouches down next to her fiancee's murderer, as though she trusts him, as though he could do no wrong, and she tells him what he already, somewhere, knows. He can't look at her, but she manages to look at him as she talks, tells him what had happened, fits the jagged-edged pieces together and presents the picture to him, stark and clear, black and white. She tells him everything, because they're the same, and he can't hurt her anymore than she can hate him.

"There's so much in my head," he says at length, quietly marveling.

She steels herself, swallows hard. Her fingers dig into the arm of his chair. She's thinking of what's in his head— Danny's last look as he recognized what was about to happen to him, his last moments. Everything that had been taken from her, by him, willfully or no.

"I didn't—" he says, and thinks its useless protesting.

"I know," she says, though, beyond all expectation. "You didn't want any of this to happen. It happened to you like it happened to me— someone got into your head and took away your free will. You had no choice."

His earlier words— I feel like I've been stolen from myself— are a mirror to her own thoughts to the extent that she finds it hard to hear them. It makes her want to clap a hand over her mouth, over his, to keep them both from blurting out secrets.

He nods slowly, looking absolutely dumbfounded at her acceptance— her kindness. No one has been kind to Shepard in a very, very long time.

"So you hid yourself away." She tells him his own story like a lullaby. "On the off chance that it was what you deserved. Just in case."

"Because I was a killer," he mumbles to his knees. She straightens her spine.

"No. They are the killers. You are an instrument. Its like they say— guns don't kill people. People kill people."

"But I'm a person," he points out tentatively as though he halfway expects to be contradicted.

She ducks her head, looks up at his frightened, haggard face with compassion and honesty. He's nearly forgotten what honesty looks like. "You are," she says. "You're a person. You'll get cut, and you'll heal. Don't hide in the dark and pretend it never happened. Face it and move forward."

She has a bruise on her shoulder, underneath the edge of her shirt. He can see it. He can see it leading to others, too, leading and being followed, a run of bruises coming together into a pool, like raindrops down a window, down her chest and over her stomach, all the way down. She's done a lot of fighting, some of it against him; the visible bruises are not the most painful. He turns his eyes away.

"You were going to tell me about yourself, Sydney." He's hopeful. He wants her to talk, and he wants to sit and listen. He wants to be her the way she is him.

"No. You wanted me to tell you about myself," she contradicts, but Shepard is a whipped dog sitting there in the chair beside her, and she shifts position slightly, getting on her knees so she can speak close to his ear.

"I'm working on it," she informs him steadily, all traces of tears gone out of her voice. "I feel like a juggling act, trying to keep an insane amount of balls in the air. This is how I know you're not crazy, Shepard, because you think you are. If you think you are then you're just like the rest of us. Its when you're convinced that you're sane and the rest of the world has gone off its rocker that you need to worry."

This elicits the strangest reaction. He turns toward her for the first time, and smiles. A new occurrence. He has to dig for it, pull it up out of nowhere, blow the dust off it, but there it is, a smile for her, for Sydney Bristow. She smiles back and it just about breaks her.

"I'm in college, so I've got papers due. I love the library mostly. My best friend just got engaged. I love weddings. Dancing. Cake. I fight for my life and for my sanity on a regular basis, just like anybody else. Except— different." She finishes with a soft curve of her mouth, almost a smile but not quite.

"Your eyes are brown," he says, confidingly, and she forgets the significance and importance of this for a moment and just wonders why Shepard is staring at her with such enraptured concentration. Then she remembers that he can only see in black and white, that every nuance of color is a triumph and an oddity to him, and she smiles fully. This time it doesn't hurt as bad.

"See, it'll get better. You'll heal every day. It will all come back."

His color sense is not the only thing that will come back; a fact which they remember at the same moment, and she drops her smile immediately. Again he has to dig, but the proper words come out at last.

"I am so sorry—"

He'll repeat it forever, such desperation in his broken voice that once again it reminds her strongly of what she would say, were she allowed to be so honest. Once again she has the urge to cover his mouth and stop him from letting out all her secrets, and this time she gives in to it, leaning forward, putting her hand very firmly over his lips. His eyes widen.

"Stop," she says. "Please don't tell me that anymore. You're not the one who should be sorry, and they'll never say it. So it doesn't seem real. I know it is, I know, Shepard. But it seems more counterfeit than any identity, because it shouldn't be you."

He's still for a moment, then both his hands come up and take hers down from his mouth and he presses a cold, slow kiss to her palm, below and between her thumb and forefinger. She can't make herself move for the shock of it and before she can stop him he's leaned closer and pressed another, just as cold and a little slower still, to her mouth, to quiet her, to quiet them both. In the flickering firelight they're all orange and red; his eyes are closed, hers open, she's able to move now but incapable of pushing him away as he executes a thorough and careful exploration of her mouth, still holding her hands in his, his grip deathlike-fast and cold as ice. She closes her eyes then too, for a moment, and leans into him a little, and then there's only shadows, no red and orange, only black and white.

He lets her go before its much past chaste, and doesn't apologize, because she'd told him not to.

They escape in the morning, and part with a press of her hand to his, and she hopes he's safe, and he wishes her well.

They're thinking the same thing, more than likely, because they're so much alike. She doesn't want him to do anything that he doesn't want to, though, so she doesn't say it.

No man is an island, entire of itself—

"And no woman either, Sydney Bristow," he says as he leaves, and he's too far away from her for her to make him take it back. So she walks away with spoken knowledge, and tells some lies to make it real, and then Sydney Bristow goes home.


End file.
